For a certain breed of New York tourist, picking up a knockoff Chanel bag in Chinatown is a trip highlight.

But that could soon change.

The city councilwoman whose district includes Chinatown recently proposed making the purchase of counterfeit goods a crime, punishable by a $1,000 fine and a jail term of up to a year.

The legislator, Margaret Chin, says the law is necessary to deter counterfeiters, and that buyers of counterfeit goods cost the city around $1 billion in tax revenue annually.

Unsurprisingly, the backlash from Canal Street shoppers has been huge.

We decided to venture down to Chinatown for ourselves to survey the counterfeit scene.

Bottom line: it was sketchy, the knockoffs kind of sucked, and we came away empty handed. But at least we learned the right way to score an "A quality" Chanel bag for 1/50 the sticker price of the real thing.

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Comments

The Bleachers

are vapid, haughty, and incredibly self-absorbed in my experience. They also tend to take frequent trips to the abortion clinics to have their baby's brains bashed in and sucked out by a vacuum cleaner. That way they can save money to buy more pretentious bags.

An Undercover Look At The Billion-Dollar Fake Goods Market Of Chinatown